There have been macarons – a few of them went to my fellow Craft Camp antendees, but these two have so far stayed with me:

Inspired by Cinti, who makes lots of these yummies. I found a tutorial here, if you’d like to give them a try too

And there’s this sweet terrarium:

I couldn’t get a decent pic of it inside the jar, so here’s a better one:

The kit for making this comes from Holly at Two Cheese Please. Totally love it – this is my favourite thing I’ve made to date.

Then there was the tutorial I found and just could not resist:

My pig is a little different… not sure I’m 100% happy with it, it’s kind of more cute than menacing!

Niamh got right into the action, helping with both the photo-styling and the actual-bird-flinging.:

Angry bird had to be rescued before too long. Needle felted toys don’t really hold up to much rough play! Niamh was sad until she realised she could use the slingshot to fling any small toy around. Plus, I made her a ladybug:

And then we had to have a final photo-session with everything in:

What’s next? Not sure, but I’ve been busy pinning a whole lot of amazing inspirational images over at Pinterest – here’s the link to my Needle Felting Love board, if you’re interested. Wow!

The challenge was to create a hot water bottle cover using whatever textile medium/s took our fancy. For warm and cozy, I thought, what better than some snuggly felt? I set about using a long hoarded piece of nubby green fulled jumper to create my cover. I then got busy with a needle and some roving to add the accents. I pieced the lot together (my sewing machine did not enjoy this part of the process, and shortly afterwards needed a restorative trip to the mechanic), and then foolishly decided I didn’t like the exposed seams, and that a good idea would be to create a faux ‘binding’ with more roving and a whole lot more stabbing. Several long hours later, I wished I had left probably-well-enough alone! But the end result was just what I wanted:

Hottie Cover challenge, Open Drawer, 2011. Front.

Hottie Cover challenge, Open Drawer, 2011. Back.

Barely squeaking in under the deadline, I delivered my hottie to Cam, who in turn delivered a whole lot of them to Open Drawer, where the crafty glitterati (!) congregated a few days later for the opening night excitement. I took the whole family, and we made several donations towards ‘best in show’ (but not one of my children voted for mine, I’ll have you know! Traitors!) I didn’t win, but my cover did sell (to somebody not my mother!), so I’m pleased to have played a small part in raising some funds for an excellent cause.

My itchy-stabby-fingers weren’t sated though! Coming soon – what happened once those felting floodgates were opened…

I also (finally) finished the First Second Quilt! Did you guess? I’m sure you did. It made an appearance or three in Brianna’s Craft Camp post, after all.

While we were there, once Quilt #1 was finished, I (finally) pieced up the back for this one, and then took advantage of all available hands to (finally) get it basted. The quilting and binding I (finally) completed last weekend. There was happy-dancing then, oh yes there was! Then I just had to wait for the misty-meisty Melbourne weather to let up for a bit so I could get a halfway decent photograph or two. And so…. (please to be excusing our hideously-neglected-because-it’s-winter “garden” in the background):

The front:

The back:

And the binding:

The design is the Mod Sampler Quilt by Elizabeth at Oh, Fransson. I found Elizabeth’s instructions provided a really clear walk-through for this very newbie quilter (though at the end, I decided against free-motion quilting, and just went for a simple diagonal grid instead).

I can say, now that it’s completely finished, I do love it. It just took me a while to get to the love. I think this is a successful ‘man’-quilt, for my littlest man (who is refusing to have a decent photograph taken today):

Now let’s see just how long it takes me to fulfil the quilty-requests of the rest of the family!

The plan was for a cot-sized quilt which would also do as a comfy couch-snuggling size, because, you know, I might have had that inkling… about the child being out of the cot (and the cot gone for good from this house – sniffle!) by the time I finished. I was right. Purposefully, I picked out non-babyish fabrics, for those reasons.

I buckled down relatively quickly, and the finished blocks were seen in the background of this post, a mere two months later. And then, uh, I stalled. What, with the baby and all, you know!

Come July 2010, and my first trip to Sewjourn, I pulled out all the bits and bobs, and finally finished me a quilt top. And then, uh, stalled. Again. This time, I think, because I was just a little bit not-in-love-so-far with my First Quilt. Hmmm.

So come early 2011, what am I do, of course, but start a Second Quilt. Naturally. Spotlight had 50% off jelly-rolls, you see, and my siren colours called to me! So I purchased, cut, pieced front, pieced back, and basted my Second Quilt. All in a matter of a week. (Despite, I might add, the atrociously poorly cut jelly roll. Siren colours or no, I won’t purchase another Spotlight jelly roll. Yuck!)

And then I stalled.

I am nothing if not consistent

Which brings us now to early-July 2011. A second trip to Sewjourn. The complete rundown of which may be found over at Brianna’s place (accompanied by far too many photographs of yours truly, I must say).

AND….. (bom bom bommmm…)

A finished quilt:

With a front:

And a back:

And (my very favourite part), some binding:

I might have had a wee tiny bit of unasked-for-help from the Craft Fairy with that lovely binding. The Craft Fairy has, I believe, learned her lesson, and won’t be doing that again

It’s small, I grant you. About 110 x 130cm (talking about quilts in metric measurements – not the done thing, I know, but I only measured it just now, and all I had to hand was a 30cm ruler!) But it’s warm and cozy, and just right for two little people (or one slightly bigger one) to snuggle under on the couch, or just for me to put across my lap like a granny. And I love it! Hurrah for Second First Quilts!

(And for long-belated returns to blogging, too! There just might be a Part Deux to this story, by the way…)

When the opportunity came along at the right time last weekend, I raised my hand to test Nikki’s lavender bag pattern, because I happened to be in need of a quick and easy crafty boost.

Ok, and also, I had an inkling that it might be the perfect fit for some certain someones. I was right:

(You know, just in case you were in need of further evidence that I have gone a bit doll crazy!)

Cute, yes?! And smelly too (in a good way!) If you don’t have a dolly who needs a handbag, you can hang yours in your wardrobe and have nice smelling clothes instead

You can find the pattern here, or a kit (including the pattern, plus bits and bobs you’ll need) is available here. All complete with Nikki’s most excellent instructions, natch!

No need to thank me!

PS. Hi – how are you? I know, it has been a while. I’ve been busy with… stuff! We’re just back from a family trip to Perth, which was super-ace, and I should probably find time to post some pics. There may also be another doll-related-craft post in the works. Erm… sorry in advance! The doll thing kind of passed me by as a child, I think I may be developing a delayed ‘habit’.

Well, finally, here’s a look at Gracie modelling the first result of my refashioning efforts:

I’m not super-dooper-ooper excited about the sleeves, they were a getting-close-to-midnight effort, and better in concept than execution. I’m going to rework this idea on the next try.

Molly wanted to get in on the action too – she’s showing off a pair of PJ pants I made to match the ones seen on Niamh seen in this post. I thought she (Niamh, not Molly) would be over the moon to wake up and discover them this morning, but she woke up distracted and full of stories about watching The Dark Crystal in her dreams. Go figure!

…and pretty good kid (mostly!)

Thank you for all the wonderful comments on Finn’s post. He was over the moon to receive each one. Every time my phone bleeped with incoming email, I had to check to see if it was for him :giggle:

He also ‘Show and Tell’ed the blog at school – an, um, interesting side effect of letting him guest post, which I probably should have foretold. Not sure how I feel about being ‘outed’ to school! I don’t think I’m in the habit of using naughty words though, so the Year 2′s should be relatively safe.

Being involved with the blog certainly made Finn a more enthusiastic model today! He’s showing off a top I made from New Look #6932 (the same pattern the PJ pants came from). The fabric is awesome too, no? I found it at Spotlight amidst all the boring stuff, and it brightened my day no end

Heh. I just noticed he’s wearing this backwards – there’s a seam in the center of the ribbing because it’s the back! It looks otherwise the same – I guess I should think about creating/acquiring myself some labels so the kids can differentiate front from back.

My first ever *guest post*! From a boy of very few words. (Except of course when he’s talking about HTML. Or CSS. Or Java. Or pretty much anything computer related ) Enjoy!

Hi, this is Finn. On the weekend Mum taught me how to knit. I learned garter stitch. I made a blanket for my sister’s baby doll. While I was making it Rohan pulled the needles out. Mum put them back in.

Do you like it?

Anyway. In my creative space at the moment, I’m contemplating the future of some more Op Shop* finds. A bit of refashioning is in order for a few skirts I picked up a while back. The first has already undergone the chop:

It started out looking like this:

Meh. Not really my cup of tea. But perfect for cutting up and making more doll clothes!

The other two are much kinder to the eyeballs. The brown one is a few sizes too big for Niamh – I’m not sure whether I’ll try making this one into a top or just stick with something simple and do a downsized skirt.

The pink one is going to become a light summer dress – it has shirring at the top, so I’m planning to cut it down to size and use the excess fabric for straps.

Actually, I’m not sure how any of this will happen today. Thursday is crazy with ballet-piano-swimming attendance, and later tonight I’ll be popping in to Cathy’s exhibition But possibly I’ll carve out a little bit of time in there somewhere.

See what other creative folks are up to today, over at Kirsty’s place.

*Op Shop = Thrift Store

Nothing especially groundbreaking. The kids were in need of some more winter PJs – darn small people and their incessant growing! I had intended to just make pants and pick up some cheap plain colour Tshirts to go with them, but while I was flicking through some old issues of Ottobre I came across a Tshirt pattern, recalled some many meters of a green cotton knit fabric* hiding in the bottom of my stash, and thought, well, why the heck not. I do now have a suitable-for-polite-company-overlocker, after all!

The result:

This is the Slim Fit Tshirt from Ottobre 3/2007. And he doesn’t like it! Well, he does, but I agree he could go up a size or two (the fit is… well, slim!) So I agreed to make another (not done yet), and instead earmarked this one as a coming-up-soon-birthday gift, and decided to give it a little extra character:

The deer(?) critter is also from Ottobre – the 4/2007 issue has a bunch of cute characters adorning the pages, so I just blew one up about 300% on the copier and stencilled it on using the freezer paper technique*. Perfect!

I got a bit cocky with the next T. Consequently? Not as good. But still good enough for a jarmie top:

(Yes, I know I said winter PJs, but my kids go light or nothing on top for bed all year round.)

The pants I made are from New Look pattern 6932. I didn’t end up finding a nice simple pants pattern for all three kids in any of my Ottobre back issues, so I picked this one up. I think it was a good value buy – including pattern sizes from 6 months – 8 years, and several pant/top options.

Here are the first of Rohan’s pants finished:

I have another two pair cut out for him, and another pair for Niamh, and some more Tshirts waiting as well.

Oh, and while I am slowing down your internetz with my pic heavy post, here’s a couple more. These pants were not made recently (actually they were the pants I was making when Niamh tried to knock her front teeth out), but Ro finally fits into them:

The denim in these is from a discarded pair of my jeans, and the robot print, which I love, and will salvage once he outgrows the pants, is from GJs. (Who are on the brink of another 25%-off sale. Oh dear.)

So. That’s what I’ve been up to. Now has anybody seen my house, it seems to have disappeared under a mountain of laundry.

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*The green fabric is leftover from when I made myself a Moby Wrap style baby carrier, back when Niamh was a smidge of a thing. I don’t think I ever blogged it. When I went looking for a photo, the best I could come up with was this one. (That’s Rohan in the wrap there, not Niamh). I miss slinging my babes around!

**I first learned about freezer paper stencilling on Craftster many a year ago, but the original post seems to be missing half its images. Amy Karol has a simple little tute on it here. I’m impatient and never let mine dry overnight though, I always blast it with the hairdryer!